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Arizona Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs is taking the state’s child protective services agency in a radically different direction in the wake of a ProPublica-NBC News investigation into the racial disparities that have plagued the child welfare system here. This week, Hobbs, a Democrat, announced that she has selected Matthew Stewart, a Black community advocate, as the new head of Arizona’s Department of Child Safety. Arizona’s child welfare system has long disproportionately investigated Black families. After leaving DCS, Stewart formed the community organization Our Sister Our Brother, which has fought the department for more equitable treatment of Black and also low-income parents. Child welfare experts in the state and families affected by the system praised Stewart’s selection, though some wondered how much change he could bring about even in DCS’ top position.

Known in the legal world as the “death penalty” of child welfare, it can happen in a matter of months. One in 100 U.S. children — disproportionately Black and Native American — experience termination through the child welfare system before they turn 18, the study found. Still, longer timelines can also reflect a stronger focus on family reunification and a willingness to devote greater resources to meet that goal, child welfare experts say. And some child welfare advocates have criticized the law’s focus on narrow initiatives like parenting classes, which they say fail to address poverty and the other root causes of neglect that prompt most child welfare cases. Snodgrass said she never imagined when her child welfare case started that she could lose her rights to her children.

Put another way, more Black children in metro Phoenix will go through a child maltreatment investigation than won’t. Almost all described a system so omnipresent among Black families that it has created a kind of communitywide dread: of that next knock on the door, of that next warrantless search of their home. Many Black families first moved there as a result of redlining and racial covenants that blocked them from renting or owning property elsewhere. In Maricopa County, Black children experienced child welfare investigations at one of the highest rates among large counties nationally, and nearly three times the rate of their white peers, from 2015 to 2019. But throughout the country, investigations were more pervasive among Black families.

☆ CPS workers search millions of homes a year. A mom who resisted paid a price.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-13 | by ( Eli Hager | Eli Hager Is A Reporter For Propublica Covering Issues Affecting Children | Teens In The Southwest. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +9 min

Ferguson, a nurse working 16-hour double shifts, knew instantly who she’d find in her hallway that day in February 2019. A domestic violence survivor who previously lived in a shelter, Ferguson had never been accused of child abuse, ACS case records show. But many parents don’t know that they have the right to deny these government agents or don’t push back for fear of losing their children, according to parents and their advocates. It’s a staggering reality — likely millions of warrantless searches a year — and one that has not been reported before. Ferguson believes her constitutional rights were violated that day at her apartment, and is now suing New York City in federal court.

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